Battery powered SA, could be 100% renewable for just $60 – $90 billion

South Australia (SA) is planning to build a new gas fossil fuel plant for $550 million because it has too much competitive and “cost efficient” free energy. There are fears this will not only push up electricity prices in the state but in Victoria, NSW and Tasmania too. (Bravo, SA). In order to build a new fossil fuel plant with Greens permission they spend $360m on the new gas plant, and then offered $150m more to appease the angry renewables spirits. It is said to be needed to encourage investment. Obviously no sane investor would spend money on renewables for purely economic reasons.

But in the long run, SA wants to go “100% renewable”. Below Paul Miskelly and Tom Quirk calculate that for SA to truly do that, it would need about 270GWh of batteries to cover the peak use. This would require 7.5 million tonnes of lead acid batteries and cost 60 – 90 billion dollars (and you thought an interconnector was expensive — SA could buy 60 – 90 interconnectors). For perspective the total state GDP is $97B (compared to AUS total of $1629). South Australian state govt revenue and expenses is about $16B so they can afford the batteries in 5 years if they cancel their own government.

If they were buying Power Walls from Tesla instead they would need 20 million of them. The retail cost is $180 billion. They also would have some 2000 wind turbines at 2.5 MW so 10,000 Power Walls per turbine.

– Jo h/t David B, Scott of the Pacific too.

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South Australia – a Renewable State?

Paul Miskelly and Tom Quirk

With $90 billion spent on batteries and 4,000 MW of more wind farms, South Australia could be a totally renewable state, at least for electricity.

South Australia along with one or two other states has been described by Al Gore as the canary in the coal mine for climate change and renewable energy. This interesting comparison was rewarded by South Australia putting the canary in the dark as there was no coal. But it would be interesting to see what the electricity supply of South Australia might be like with zero CO2 emissions as is the fond wish of many and even of learned societies.

There are many combinations of renewables that could be considered with wind, solar, biomass, pumped storage and various storage technologies. The following is the simplest, combining wind farms and batteries.

The starting point for this analysis is the dominance of wind power in South Australia. To expand this renewable source we must add battery storage as there are no present alternatives. The present 1575 MW of wind farms meets some 35% of demand and expanding this to give an average 100% of supply, we must store the surplus and use that when the wind falls away. The performance of the present demand and wind farms supply is sampled from AEMO data for 3 January to 31 March 2016.

So wind farm output is increased by 358% to 5644 MW, an additional 4069 MW of wind farms, so that the average over 3 months equals the average demand. This is presented in Figure 1 and shows periods of surplus and deficit of supply.

Figure 1: Variations of demand in South Australia for January to March 2016 and 358% increased wind farm supply. (Source AEMO)

Figure 1: Variations of demand in South Australia for January to March 2016 and 358% increased wind farm supply. (Source AEMO)

The total surplus is equal to the total deficit and the detail is shown in Figure 2. There are periods for example 17 to 24 January 2016 where the average deficit is 750 MW for 168 hours, a total of 125,000 MWh. This is a measure of the energy storage that is needed from the surplus energy of the period 13 to 17 January. For the year 2016 the demand in South Australia was 14,400 GWh so the storage need is of the order of 1% of the demand for the year.

Figure 2: Variations of surplus and deficit from wind farm supply compared to demand for January to March 2016

The variations in storage needs are shown in Figure 3. The maximum storage need is defined as the value necessary to satisfy demand at all times. This is a value of 270 GWh (270,000 MWh) for the period analysed. This is 2% of the annual demand for electricity in South Australia.

Figure 3: Storage of surplus wind farm energy to match demand

The challenge is to identify storage technology for some 300 GWh of supply. The base case is to calculate the amount and cost of lead acid batteries to satisfy this need.

A very thorough summary of storage technologies is to be found in Sustainable Energy[1]. Figure 4 is a summary of the storage technology power and energy density capabilities. The range of batteries extends from lead acid to lithium-ion and beyond. For this analysis the energy densities are the mid range values for lead acid and lithium-ion.

On the bottom far right of the figure, the hydrocarbons (fossil fuels) show energy densities of a factor of ten greater than the batteries considered here.

Figure 4: Scatter plot of power and energy density for storage technologies from page 400 of reference 1.

Figure 4: Scatter plot of power and energy density for storage technologies from page 400 of reference 1.

So for the lead acid batteries adopting a value of 40 Wh/kg for 300 GWh of storage requires 7,500,000 tonnes of lead acid batteries. For higher energy density lithium-ion batteries have an energy density of 140 Wh/kg so only 2,100,000 tonnes would be needed.

But this could be realized at what cost? Estimates of lead acid battery costs are around $0.20 per Wh while lithium-ion batteries vary from $0.50 to $0.90 per Wh. The Power Wall 2 lithium-ion battery from Tesla[2] is A$8,000 for 14 kWh but this is a retail price of $0.57 per Wh. The wholesale bulk price could be as low as $0.30 per Wh with better performance than the lead acid battery in discharge rate and lifetime.

Willem Post has a detailed article on energy storage in Germany[3]. His base case is lead acid batteries with massive, bulkenergy storage. The cost per Wh is $0.32.

So the battery storage is some $60 to $90 billion to store the surplus energy from 4,000 MW of new wind farms with substantial running costs due to battery lifetime and erratic discharges.

This analysis outlines the storage required to address wind’s inherent intermittency. It does not address the requirements, presently unaddressed by wind energy technology, of grid stability and control, which is the need for the provision of synchronous inertia to protect grid stability. Should the battery route be chosen to address this requirement, such provision may indeed require more battery storage.

Of course South Australia could close all the gas fueled power stations and build massive interconnectors to the other states and then blame them for CO2 emissions. Perhaps that is why the South Australian government talks of nationalizing the power stations.

In a response to Beyond Zero Emission’s claim Australia could be entirely powered by renewables by 2020 Peter Lang and Martin Nicholson along with professor Barry Brooks did an analysis and concluded yes it could happen with 2 provisos:

The greens intentionally or otherwise have infected all the major political parties in this nation and if they are not resisted will destroy this nation.

Another good analysis by Miskelly and Quirk but until the likes of Turnbull and Shorten are removed from any policy making it is only grist for the mill because while the rest of us will undergo great hardship at the power shortages these 2 fools will create they will be insulated from the effects of their egregious actions.

Be careful when you say neo-Nazis. There are those who believe Hitler is still alive and his private group have amassed a large number of flying saucers and mother ships ready to pounce on the world when the financial meltdown comes. I’m not one of them of course but it makes for a very interesting story.

In yesterday’s entry, I suggested that rather than bemoan the inevitable failure of centralized “fixes,” let’s turn our efforts to the real solutions: decentralized, networked, localized. To commentators such as Richard Florida decentralized, networked, localized describes cities.

There is a slight problem with the devolution of cities from the state.

If you look at history, especially military history, sooner or later a given “city state” (lets call it Twocangetmore) will decide that the city down the road, or over the hill, or across the river, has more resources than they really need, and certainly more than their fair share, while the citizens of Twocangetmore are going without. Besides, those people down the road, or over the hill, or across the river, are different and probably inferior to the citizens of Twocangetmore, and are obviously thieves and probably infested with all sorts of diseases, and are therefore a threat to the fair and healthy folk of Twocangetmore. Something must be done!

I suspect that is because our Parliament entirely consists of elected members, who are actually known by their constituents. I have personally met with my MP on a number of occasions. He is a nice guy, if somewhat ineffective.

The difference, from my perspective, is due to New Zealand not having a two-house system, unlike Australia and the UK, or deity-help-us, The United States.

We have no Lords or Senators. Who, in other jurisdictions seem to only be there for the free lunch.

I have done a fair amount of research work for Parliament, over the years. I have come to realise that the majority of politicians are genuinely interested in their constituents, and in the economy within which their constituents must live and work.

In the New Zealand interpretation of Parliamentary democracy, everybody knows where the buck stops, and everybody knows that the members are only there until the next election.

Caveat: The above assumes an exception of the Greens, of course. They are just loony.

Our local Council has just changed the electoral procedure despite 2 surveys and a petition all of which were over 90% against the change. The Green members were leading the charge with the Mayor (a Green) voting FOR the amendment to give a hung vote the first time it came up, and with the policy when 2 members who voted against it first were absent.
Democracy Green style. The idea is for the ward that votes Green to be able to dominate the vote at the next election.

They used to. It was called Glenside hospital. It was good for locking up insane people. Now the insane people run the state. Since Glenside was useful like a Coal powered power station, they shut it down, and turned it into a housing estate.

At the time that the SA power plan was announced on Tuesday, SA wind-power was at 35mW and at that level for most of the day! That’s enough to run a town of 20,000 provided there were no intensive power using factories or businesses and people didn’t turn on their air-conditioners Lol. Perhaps Weatherill is planning to turn SA into such a town, just to house loyal public servants, and to hell with everyone else in SA.

Every purchase of a gas fired power plant gets a complimentary Swiss army pocket knife AND that’s not all!
If you also get the battery backup pack, you get a set of steak knives.
This “once in a lifetime” offer closes midnight Friday 17 March 2017.

Not only that but the former NSW Labor Government spent millions reconstructing Epping Road at Lane Cove, reducing vehicle lanes to two with no parking lanes and a bus lane instead of parking and channeling vehicles into the privately operated Lane Cove Tunnel for city bound traffic causing peak hour chaos.

And then creating toll collection cameras on entry roads all the way from Neutral Bay to Artarmon well before the Lane Cove Tunnel entry and ignoring several exits before that point.

Are there no engineers in SA? Is the government/green radicals so powerful & vengeful that common sense cannot be spoken?
All these problems can be solved by existing engineering techniques and common sense government.

Like the UK Labour Government that asked the Chief Scientist for advice on the UN IPCC global warming claim and when the report questioned the IPCC claim the government ignored the report and asked the Chief Economist to report on the likely impact on the economy based on the IPCC claims.

When it comes to off grid survival, there are only two advantages to using an Edison Battery. First, these are the only rechargeable batteries that can withstand recharging on a daily basis. In fact, many people today that generate power from windmills rely on Edison Batteries because they do not break down for years on end.

Unlike other rechargeable batteries, Edison Batteries are much cheaper to make. Iron and nickel are both readily available when compared to cadmium and other metals used in modern rechargeable batteries. In a time of crisis, you may be able to create your own Edison batteries if you have access to a good junk yard or other sources of used metal. Once you know all the steps to building these batteries, you can have a reliable method for storing electricity generated by other devices.

I read about a 1900s electric car, former New York US taxi cab, discovered in a garage by an enthusiast who wanted to restore it. After replacing the distilled water and charging the batteries they were found to be serviceable.

So good Jo has made this a thread, no need for me to comment further, time to sit back and watch the endless comments from naysayers trying to find every possible reason it won’t work, I might revisit in a few days and see who game to make a call.
270Gwh of lead acid batteries, that’s Gold!

We all have biases on a whole range of issues, particularly climate change, and I like the repartee that our side can muster. Always welcome outsiders, our swords are getting rusty through lack of use.

‘Know where we can find one?’

The Gutter Trash is a good starting point, like most supporters of the green blob they have little interest in climate change. Good luck wooing some of them back here.

An interesting take on the future of battery storage in South Australia, a scenario of 270Gwh of storage that’s not necessary and not going to happen, it’s also intriguing that the authors would consider the alternatives as the Tesla Powerwall 2 that’s designed for home and small business not industrial scale or even Lead-acid, of course anything will be claimed in desperation from two proponents of Nuclear power.
So about that Nuclear power, imagine an agreement was formed and Nuclear was determined to provide Australia’s future energy, after all the extra discussion on all levels, the planning, the NIMBY argument, the court battles, the seemingly forever construction, it would be 10 and more likely 15 years before the first electrons would be produced, by then that multi billion dollar reactor would be a stranded asset, $250 per Kwh for battery storage is arrived sooner than most imagined, the price will just keep going lower until the arguments against are exhausted, the authors know this but why not have one last opinion piece with twisted facts for old times sake.

Keith, didn’t we already have two load shedding exercises recently in NSW? Take out another station and that can only get a lot worse. All the aluminium smelters will have to shut down for a start.

The problem here started with the privatisation of the generators. Enter then the RET regulations, and the owners have a much more secure cashflow if it is based on high prices rather than increased generation capacity. That is government policy.

It is in the owners’ best interests to ensure that silent stations be immediately demolished so that they can not be reopened to provide cheaper power. that also is current government policy.

When you look at the products of Free Market Theory, it’s hard to get away from the conclusion that the Free Market textbooks must have been written by the Communists.

Now for nuclear. Oliver K. Manuel has foreshadowed here a major announcement on nuclear energy next month. His personal CV shows he has spent his entire working life in the highest echelons of true science. He claims that politicians have conspired to hide a very important truth on nuclear energy, and he has to date been unable to convince the science community of this theory. Given that in this industry most of the research is funded directly or indirectly by governments, this is not unfeasible. So, would opening up this hidden line of theory enable the development of a new and much better way to harness the power of the atom?

If it does, then every existing power station, nuclear or otherwise, might quickly become a stranded asset.

“I might revisit in a few days and see who game to make a call.
270Gwh of lead acid batteries, that’s Gold!”

What Gold? That is but 190,000 “NPP 12V 120 Amp 12 Volt 120Ah Rechargeable Sealed Lead Acid Battery” @ 40 Kg each. Best for stationary use, or ballast in large sailing craft. I Pay US$185 each delivered to my residence. For all 190,000 that would be less than 7.7 thousand tonnes of lead acid batteries and cost with discount than US$30 million. You might still wish to invest in a bicycle driven generator for electrical power, when you need it; if you can’t pedal, you do not need it!!

$90 AU to put pipes up cow’s ar$es? Sounds ideal for me. Collect the biomethane for new CCGTs and keep the windmills going to pretend they work.

In the UK we have been down a similar road with ‘Diesel STOR’. However we’ve now learnt that the windmills are there for show; to pretend politicians like Bliar, Miliband minor and Cameron were Common Purpose success stories.

Notice the common factor – the windmills don’t work, defined as saving Grid fossil fuel use. once their power is > 10% of demand.

We are paying people who do not understand power supply engineering to make multi-billion $ decisions about the State’s power supply. Politicians need to barred from the technical side unless they have at least a science degree.
As a builder I’m not qualified either but my father designed a wind turbine and some nuclear reactors and my son is currently a power station chemist so I see a fair bit of despondent head shaking when these fairy-floss ideas are floated.

… Picture your typical modern wind farm. Towers more than
200 feet high that support a turbine housing, or nacelle, the
size of a bus. Sweeping the sky, three rotor blades,100 to 150
feet long, … say, listen to that thrumm!.

A study by Tony from Oz, 2009, ‘The Limits of Renewable Power,; analyses the engineering in one of these large turbines in windy Esperance, Western Australia, the kind of tower proliferating
around the world. Its electric power is generated in the nacelle behind the propeller. The generator can’t be too large though,
or it couldn’t be mounted off the ground, so units most commonly
in use only generate about 3/4MW power output. The gear box of
the unit is designed to hold the turbine at one speed, to produce maximum power and operate in prescribed wind speeds, and to lock down in high winds so the blades won’t be damaged.

So you could say intermittency is a constant problem. In the
United Kingdom, BBC weatherman, Paul Hudson, reported in 2011,
that in three consecutive winters of intense cold, there was
little or no wind to generate electricity. On December the
21st, 2010, coal and gas generated 45,000 MW of electricity,
compared to wind generated electricity of 20 MW.

Its also a test to see how much boofhead joe public will put up with…..if a sheep will stand still while being shorn, well happy days for those doingthe shearing.

My guess is that since we havent seen riots on the SA streets, the insanity will notch up to the next step. In the mean time, SA residents can either leave, or deport their “govt” to California wherte they will be in good company….

Alan Finkel in Cosmos [August 2016]:
Imagine if you took all the lithium-ion batteries produced in 2014 for phones, laptops and cars and instead used them to provide backup for the global electricity supply.
They’d keep the world running for just nine seconds!

Alan Finkel to the IAEA [September 2016]:
For example, if we took all the lithium ion batteries we produced right across the world in 2014, how long do you think we could rely on them to satisfy global electricity demand?
Forty-six seconds, ladies and gentlemen…

Anyone seen the Fire Department risk assessment on this battery system?
I reckon that’d be interesting but no doubt it’ll be “fast-tracked” . . which is the phrase used because “rubber stamped” has just so many negative connotations.

Alan Finkel might be able to calculate the capacity of batteries and also to realise that they are not a realistic solution to our power needs. However it seems that he has not yet woken up to the the lack of evidence for CAGW. He promised to supply such evidence to Malcolm Roberts. As far as I know he as not yet done so.

Actually, I’ve come to the conclusion that – given that no even vaguely sentient being can possibly fail to understand the reality of the situation, or to have been able to foresee the inevitable outcome we are facing – that the failure is intentional.

That is, I’ve come to the conclusion that the destruction of our economy through destruction of our electricity generating capacity and reliability is deliberate. There can be no other explanation.

(OK, I know I’m being a bit generous in thinking that politicians or bureaucrats can be “sentient”, but if you can’t trust the government, well then who can you trust?!)

My Canadian hometown recently spent $1M reclaiming an abandoned battery salvage operation (skunk and junk operation). It is now a very expensive small city park, which still can not be built upon after “reclamation.

What most commentators miss is that this announcement is just SPIN. The new OCGT won’t supply continuous electricity, nor reduce the cost, nor reduce emissions (quite the reverse). It is intended to add a fig leaf to the State government’s claim that the blackouts were all the fault of those EVIL PRIVATE COMPANIES who didn’t start up a power station at half an hour notice. The facts that Pelican Point 2 had been moth-balled because it had been losing money because of subsidised wind (like all base load gas and coal fired plants), that it didn’t have any fuel available and that, as a CCGT, it couldn’t start up in 30 minutes have thus been explained away to gullible and not very intelligent people like Willard.

The battery bit is because the new OCGT is unlikely to be built before the election in 12 months time, so alternate distraction is needed when the blackouts start again. They won’t add to black start capability, won’t supply much power and won’t reduce the cost of electricity, but the idea sounds good, especially since that technological ignoramus Turnbull has put his foot into the mess. Good enough to fool people like Willard who are several years – I’m being polite – behind the times.

Jay was on the ABC this morning explaining that the reason the coal-powered stations have been decommissioned/blown up is because we DO NOT have a carbon tax.

His logic is that there has been no investment in these stations due to the POSSIBILITY of a carbon price, hence uncertainty. If the Feds had introduced a carbon price then investors would have certainty and put their money into coal-powered generators that would then have to pay the carbon price which would make them less competitive ….. oh, wait!

Nothing to do with Jay and Co who have been fighting for change to the power structures for 10 years, vote for us as we are your best friends, renewables are the future, world’s best practice, etc, et more BS

The crow eaters have proven for many years just how bloody stupid they are.
I think Weatherdill will be voted back in because the South Australian population is now used to living on other peoples GST and have not one iota of common sense.

I’m in New York City now and the place is snowed out. Thanks to almost limitless supplies of cheap, reliable energy however, everyone is toasty and warm inside buildings and the snow is being cleared off the streets with fossil fuel powered machines.

Can’t do that with wind and solar power or electric vehicles.

And remember, most of the civilised world lives in places with cold winters and snow, Australia is a rare exception.

“One of the impediments to batteries being fully deployed in the market is that they can’t capture all the revenue that should be available to them, simply because of the way in which the regulations for the market are established.”

I’m sure this comment is meant to be deep but it’s actually just incomprehensible. You may as well complain that the market stops batteries from tap dancing or doing the backstroke. Batteries store a bit of power and that’s all they do. Then they fade away and you have to buy another heavy lump of feeble energy storage.

Like solar and wind power, batteries are tired old mutton technology dressed as lamb. Elon is filling the junkyards of the future.

With money from the tax payer! Tesla and profit do not belong in the same sentence. His latest offer is an attempt to capture move taxpayer money, now that it is rapidly drying up in the United States.

If the power wall was so good,how come Tesla dropped the 10 MW battery and only kept the 7 MW power wall?And I think the”Firefighters”said they wouldn’t go near a house equiped with a 10 MW power wall.

I have a plan for a rammed earth/mud brick house (but no open plan or cathedral ceilings, just normal sized rooms with corridors and yummy alcoves). As well as grid power, solar will be a part of the plan…but I know whose solar I wouldn’t touch.

Solar and batteries are old, commonplace technologies which can be handy in some situations. There are numerous manufacturers and installers who’ve been around for a long time and who can be consulted with some confidence if you are in the market for solar.

I once had dinner in France with a retired geothermal engineer. He told me that geothermal was old and limited, though handy in some situations. Does this sound familiar?

Tesla dropped the 10kwh back in March last year because demand was far higher for the 7kwh so production was streamlined, now the 7kwh has been replaced by the 2nd gen product with 13.2kwh useable for the same price.
Can you provide a link to the article where firefighters said they wouldn’t go near a house with a 10kwh Powerwall Clive?

“I expected that storage would lead to an increase in energy consumption,” said Robert Fares from the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, “but I was surprised that the increase could be so significant – about an eight to 14 per cent increase on average over the year.”

Fares, together with Professor Michael Webber, analysed the impact of home energy storage using electricity data from almost 100 Texas households that are part of a smart grid test bed managed by Austin-based renewable energy and smart technology company Pecan Street Inc.

Overall the inefficiencies of the charge/discharge cycle, insurance, and maintenance costs all contribute to higher consumer bills.

‘A value of 40Wh/kg for 33GWh of storage requires
7,500,000 tonnes of lead acid batteries.’

And there’s another problem, says Matt Ridley, on his blog,
28th October,2016, ‘Batteries Won’t Make Renewables Into
Reliables.’

‘There is a further problem. Any energy technology must
generate more energy over its lifetime than was used in
its manufacture and operation, by a ratio of at least seven,
otherwise it is a waste of money. This is known as energy
return on energy invested. The oil coming out of an oil well,
or the electricity from a wind turbine must be much more
than will be used in drilling the next well or making the
next turbine: because it has to provide useful energy to the
economy too, and to provide people with the wherewithal to
build and repair machines and structures. It’s believed that
medieval agrarian economies teetered close to the brink of
this energy return threshold, getting not much more energy out
of a windmill or food from a cornfield than had gone into it
in terms of muscle power.’

This makes the mistake of treating energy as a uniform commodity. Of course it isn’t and in particular it has different value based on time and space. Move energy on these dimensions (eg storage, transmission) and you may add value to it, and the added value may be enough to buy the energy needed to do it.

SA green politicians remind me of the quote, “”Oh! What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”. . .

Do gooders and politicians “discover” problems which require government solutions; the government enacts “solutions” which don’t work, but do create new problems — that require more government intervention and solutions. And it goes on and on.

Of course, because government meant well, they accept no blame for the problems they create. It’s always the opposition that gets blamed.

SA is the poster boy (person?) for government’s ability to take something that works dependably and efficiently and make a mess out of it.

I’m a retired engineer who worked 33 years in the power generating industry. SA is a bad dream. And good luck with lead-acid batteries.

Actually, the battery wall is a decent idea. But,they will probably place it at the farms. Not near the use. But, to keep the farm battery charged? Wind power? Solar? You still have the transmission problems. Place it near the users? Now, you can have a backup. But that is a power plant available for each community. Manned and available 24/7. And you are having to do the same for wind and solar. So where is the savings?

Belatedly I just discovered that the climatedebatedaily.com website has wound up. There is very interesting comment in the announcement there, on confirmation bias.

I don’t agree with the inference that thinking can’t be changed. While the sceptics are winning the science war, the warmists are winning the propaganda war. This because from about the time of the election of the Abbott/Gore.by.proxy government in 2013 the warmists greatly stepped up their propaganda campaign. It has paid off for them.

Maybe outsiders don’t understand my Gore.by.proxy. At the 2013 election a wealthy maverick running a populist campaign started a new party which won four seats in our Senate, our House of Review. He appeared to be an AGW sceptic.

Neither major party held a majority, so this new party held the balance of power. Immediately before the new senate came into action, out of the blue we saw Clive Palmer and Al Gore spruiking from the steps of Parliament House. Al had somehow persuaded Clive to change his stance on AGW politics. I would like to know how. Clive Palmer’s personal business looked like a sitting duck to me.

So, despite The Abbott government being elected in a landslide to reverse the lunacy of the previous government they were stymied in the Senate. Many of the lunatic policies of the Rudd/Gillard government are still in place. At Al Gore’s behest.

Oooh, I do like the allusion to the flinging of virgins into the volcano to appease the angry gods!

How long before the Greens realise how backward they really are? A rhetorical question really, as the answer has to be: “Never!” How long, though, before the rest of the world wakes up, and realises how they have been duped? Probably another rhetorical question, though; history does show that people can be what can only be viewed in retrospect as unbelievably stupid.

Just thinking aloud here but what discharge rate can a 100MWh battery deliver?
If it’s only going to last 12 minutes (or any short duration) is that even possible?
I’m recalling guys that raced radio controlled cars who preferred Ni-Cd batteries because they had a better discharge rate . . and heated up quite a bit too.

Tesla significantly revised their powerwall warranty, downward. As of 2016, they warrant >85% capacity for 2 yrs, >72% capacity for 5 yrs, 60% capacity for 10 yrs. This ought make the cost/reliability/replacement issues for SA’s situation a bit more complicated than originally believed.

Why? Is no politician listening? Pelican point is a gas fossil fuel plant. It lost $15Million last year. The same with new coal plants. It does not matter how efficient they are. They are ‘fossil fuel’ and as such, subject to the RET. They are unprofitable before they are built, at any price.

No one will build new fossil fuel power, private of public because the RET takes 2x your money and uses it to pay solar and wind producers. Worse, you are forced to take their output, whether you can sell it or not. That is why Hazelwood is closing. That is why despite the ranting of Weatherill, Pelican point remains closed.

The RET makes fossil fuel power stations economic nonsense, as was intended. When the RET was 1c per kwhr, it was tolerable. Now it is 9c kwhr and going higher, there are no solutions.

Windpower is not enough. Batteries do not make electricity. Without coal power to pay for windpower, there is no money to build it. As coal power stations close, wind power has to pay for itself and it is 10x as expensive.

When Hazelwood closes, the lid will come of this whole Green fantasy. It’s about time someone realised the RET is not a ‘target’, it is a monstrous Carbon TAX, the Ridiculous Energy Tax, as was always intended. Soon all manufacturing will shut.

Since 1900, isolated Australia has been famous for having the world’s highest labour rates. Soon we will have achieved another manufacturing record, the world’s highest energy rates. There is no point politicians pushing STEM. There are no jobs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, only public service jobs as in the Great Depression. Even coffee shops cannot afford to open on Sundays except with family and trucks cannot afford to run, unless driven by family. Toyota closed because no one turned up for work in a factory run by robots.

What is amazing is that the Liberals and Nationals are every bit as much to blame. Never leave business to a bunch of lawyers.

Here in the UK they have just had the official opening of the new Carrington CCGT gas powered power station, one of the first and probably
the last of the new generation of gas power stations that provides both power and heat to nearby homes and businesses.
It cost £700M to provide 884MW ,enough for a million Manchester homes and took 7 years. There will not be another alongside it , as
originally planned, because the subsidy to renewables makes it uneconomic , according to ,unbelievably, the BBC .
At present on a mild evening, CCGT generally in the UK is barely breaking into a stride at 14GW , it is a calm night so wind is only 4GW whilst there is 10GW from the coal and nuclear sector which is threatened with a rolling programme of closures.
So can we get, for example, 10 GW from a combination of wind, solar and batteries for a cost of construction that matches that of the Carrington build?
I hope that is one of the questions circulating in the mind of the current UK energy minister .
If we went with CCGT and abandoned wind and solar, a programme of £10 – 15 billion over a period of about 10 years would be sufficient, especially if the restrictions on fracking were lifted then the material for a 2nd Carrington could come from all of 20 miles away.
After all we are giving away 12billion in unaudited foreign aid every year , 8% of the total tax income , so a £1billion/yr to ensure energy security should be feasible.

Add to that towing of ocean wave generators and long cables connected to the ocean floor for geothermal power generation. I am glad SA is coming up with their brain dead ideas. It will be the death of that state. Perhaps we should convert it into a giant maximum prison state and build a wall around it much like the old movie Escape From New York.

Perhaps a solution to black-outs in Sth Au could be to hire an Arktika class Soviet ice-breaker which carry two 171 MW nuclear reactors. The Russians would love to have some income to help run these ships.

As scary as the SA power woes are I can’t help but wonder about the not too distant future .
Every state and territory in oz except NSW is governed by Labor , and the next federal election will likely go their way as well , that will leave us at the mercy of their ideology toward fossil fuel and CAGW .
They are already making noises about a price on carbon and are more than likely planning to introduce one when they have total power .
I think it will take a few years for them to totally destroy the economy and the electricity grid but destroy they will .
I am glad I’m old and paid off the mortgage , the future is not exciting it’s scary .
Oh I didn’t forget about Tassie , heartland of the greens .

You might be right. A year is a long time in politics and I truly believe in a year things will be a lot scarier all over the world where the focus will swing away from climate change to what looks like an invasion of Europe thanks to Turkey’s push to revive the Ottoman Empire. Given the left have already taken sides, which happens to be the enemy, the choice of government should be clearer to us all by then. If not then we will have to suffer one more term under a socialist government before the message penetrates the thick skulls of Australians that socialism is deadly and must be eradicated from the political scene like a cancer. Otherwise the patient will die.

No I’m referring to both sides. The only difference between Labor and the LNP is the degree of socialism. Also we do not have a centre right government. We have a centre left one. The LNP used to be centre right but they have lost their way and moved towards the left of centre ever since Turnbull took over. Also Turnbull was from Goldman Sachs where he was a partner of Goldman Sachs as well as chair and managing director of Goldman Sachs Australia. That says a lot.

Let me be clear. If neither major party changes direction then given it’s highly unlikely enough Australian voters have the intelligence and the guts to vote for some other party then Australia most likely has to suffer the crash and burn scenario before we wake up. History teaches that the really important and significant lessons are only ever taught to the people the hard way.

Turnbull’s ascendency was a political coup to move the Coalition closer to the green blob, this has caused ructions.

We are now in a situation where energy has become the talking point, but soon it will all be about how free market gas disadvantages poor Australians. The socialist solution is to subsidise as long as international demand remains high, is this a good thing?

Mr Goldman Sachs fully intends to roll out infrastructure in the May budget, failure to include the bush would destroy any hope of him winning the next election.

The Greens have ‘plans to abolish stamp duty, impose taxes on ­people who inherit “a string of ‘old-money’ assets” and increase the Medicare levy for high-­income earners, which the Greens estimate would raise more than $13 billion over the forward estimates.’

Now they really are pseudo Marxists and Di Natale is encroaching on Labor territory with his new platform.

I am a little concerned it may take something as a Nikolai Caecescu moment to really wake the dopey population and politicans up when someones kid dies on the operating table coz the power went out.

People seem to have been completely hypnotised into believing the lie, and by the time they wake up, it may be too late…but the ramifications may be Caecescu-like to the political class.

The other point is that as the economy hits the “green iceberg” in slow-motion, the damage it will sustain due to govt decree will be horrific. However, this is exactly what the Communists have craved, namely equal misery for everyone.

The other point is this – anyone who aids and assists the green niaghtmare is a Green Collaborator, and should be treated as such.

There is a huge price on carbon! Currently it is $50 a tonne for coal, $100 a tonne for gas. It is called the RET and the carbon certificates are called Large Generation Certificates and the small ones are STCs. You get 15 years carbon credits in cash for installing a solar system. The only thing missing from the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 is the word carbon. They use the word fossil.

The idea that batteries provide a grid scale solution to generation intermittency is inherently a juvenile and misleading concept. Battery chemistry, depth of discharge, discharge rate, charging rate and operating temperature all affect the life cycle of the battery. Li-Ion technology is no exception. Typically, one is looking at 1000 to 2000 discharge cycles as a complete life expectancy. This is OK if the cells are cycled to low depth, over long periods of time, and infrequently. This is NOT OK if the cells are cycled frequently at high rates of discharge. The situation is exacerbated when intermittent charging and discharging are faced at high rates of charge/discharge as one might expect in stabilizing a renewable supplied grid using wind power. See: http://www.mpoweruk.com/life.htm for further explanation. A typical Li-Ion specification also is informative with respect to charge/discharge, rates, temps, and cycles. http://liionbms.com/pdf/shandong/100ah.pdf

These reasons are precisely why the Musk “Power Wall” warranty was revised significantly. In a grid setting with wind supplied variable power, the life expectancy of the cells might be on the order of 1 to 2 years depending on the depth and frequency of cell cycling. Methinks the cost estimate for batteries is off by a factor of 10. That said, politicians are rarely held to account for broken promises.

I have scrapped through the interweb as much as I can be bother to do (Google, Google Scholar, Bing, Duckduck Go, metaSearch, Gigablast…) and I can not find neither other later independent info comparing rechargeable batteries, nor later manufacturing data that substantially improves on the Lance’s quoted document.
Maybe you know of some?
If not then the 2008 document stands as the latest available, unless Willard, you can research the manufacturers data sites to find better.

Why is Dr Alan Finkel so silent? Surely his report into the Future Security of the National Electricity Market is now critical?
“The heart of the Review’s task is to find solutions to address the so-called energy trilemma – policies that simultaneously provide a high level of energy security and reliability, universal access to affordable energy services, and reduced emissions. This is easier said than done.”
The big problem is that government policies, State and Federal, have focused only on reduced emissions. There are no policies to address electricity security, reliability or affordability.

So as intermittent supplies of wind/solar increase, paid for by renewable energy certificates priced at 9 cents/Kwh, all electricity bills will continue to increase, driven by the legislated requirement to meet 23.5% renewables by 2020.

Unless Dr Finkel addresses the issue of affordability, industry won’t just be leaving SA, but all of Australia will become an energy basket case. And just a few years ago we were able to proudly claim that low energy costs in Australia from our abundant natural resources were a competitive advantage.

I can’t help but feel more and more depressed on teh Governance Federally and at State level in this country. I just saw Turnbull on TV telling us all that this shortage of gas was “unacceptable” to Aussie families, businesses blah blah blahy, etc etc. A county so rich and abundant in raw material is facing an emergency. SA itself is bad enough, they blame everyone except their lunatic policies and blind belief in the global warming faith. Government couldn’t even ensure by contract that gas companies ensure local supply. It really beggars belief, and yet there is still no groundswell of revolt in this country. I’ve never known a country more apathetic in it’s political responses. Only the Unions ever seem to do anything in this regard and generally get what they want. I’m ashamed of successive governments that have completely failed this country. People need to be brought to book, but it seems anyone who is a general adherent to the climate change agenda is bulletproof.
I have to say, we NEED a real mass power loss event, it’s the only way people will finally face the truth of energy decimation in this country.

“…that the policy makers have brought us to this brink of catastrophe.”
Why the depression and feelings of disappointment?
Is that not what modern, mostly socialist, policy makers are about? Is that not their sole reason for existing? If not, how else to employ them?

I finally understood. Front page of the Australia in John Durie’s comment. He says Frydenberg is on the right path to integrate Energy Policy and Climate Policy.

Climate Policy? We have a Climate Policy?

For all the advances in science in the 20th century, at what point did people go completely mad. A Climate Policy? We are now so all powerful with our science and our internet and our antibiotics and putting a man on the moon that governments now control Climate? So a council Climate Policy, a State Climate Policy, a National Climate Policy and an international Climate Policy?

It has finally been said. The ants are in charge of the golf course. At what point did this fantasy science beget a Climate Policy. At what point was it considered reasonable to talk of the people of South Australia controlling their climate, in fact the climate of the whole world? So the windmill farms are really henges, worshipful temples to the Climate gods.

There is no science. We have reached the point where it is acceptable to say on the front page of the Australians that we need a National Climate Policy. Socialist Crap. (to paraphrase our former Prime Minister)

Actually our Climate Policy is a policy to deindustrialise our nation and destroy our economy. Whether this is deliberate or misguided is open to debate. Although the vast majority who follow this policy are the latter I sincerely believe there are a few who belong to the former group.

‘The Foinkel’ is just another CAGW political hack appointee by UN appeaser in chief Turnbull to rubber stamp whatever he says with propaganda being masqueraded as science .

Just another of many clowns that should be sacked for adding to our current energy debacle .

A so called scientist that when asked by Senator Malcolm Roberts of One Nation ‘Is science based on empirical evidence?’, ‘the Foinkel’ could not simply answer ‘yes’, but gave a long winded political BS answer that said anything but yes!….Pathetic….just another CAGW propagandist on an overpaid job supplied by his buddy Malcolm, our esteemed one,to further enhance his own CAGW BS agenda!

I spent a couple of hours putting this below together last night and then after posting it , discovered that Jo had a new post up on the very subject I had spent so much time on.
So I hope I am not tripping over Jo’s blog policies by reposting this here.

***********************************************************************
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Yeh! And I smell another lot of a few billion dollars of OPM Desalination Plant debacles coming on fast in SA and Vic.

Somewhere, sometime and maybe very soon, somebody here in Australia is going to read the politics or complete lack of any semblance of sanity in the political class and take a gamble and get around to building a very late design, Ultra Super Critical High Efficiency, Low Emissions [ Ultra Super Critical HELE ] power generator.
And that will make whirling Windmill Weatherill and Dopey Despot Dan of Victoria look like the ignorant fools they are as they so often so publicly demonstrate .

They are absolutely intent on spending all that tax payers money on yet another stupid set of ill thought out technologies that are already approaching obsolescence or have been proven impractical and hideously expensive.
In short what they are now both promoting along with the Labour party are proving to be complete failures both practically and economically where ever they are being or have been used elsewhere in the world.
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And it is all to cover for the politicians of every party’s own utter innate stupidity in running down the entire system of what was Australia’s previously highly efficient and utterly reliable coal fired power generation system and supply and the making the big base load generators completely uneconomic by the absolute stupidity of heavily subsidising wind and solar and then expecting unsubsidised power coal fired generators that have been loaded with every conceivable uneconomic and stupid impost by those same politicians, to continue to operate.

The really sad fact in all of this debacle which is still getting under way here in Australia is that our high by world standards living standards relied so much on the utter reliability and the cheapness of the power from those big coal fired base load generators are the very basis upon which our city’s prosperity and industry is and has been for some three generations now, so heavily based.

The coal fields are located close to and on the route of the Ghan railway to Alice springs and Darwin .
The very under-utilised Ghan rail route is already there and fully operational and looking for traffic.
It is of a very heavy rail construction and could easily handle a few extra train loads of coal each day for the thousand or so kilometres run to a new Port Augusta based power Ultra Super Critical HELE power generator.

The Americans railroads run mile to two mile long coal trains with 3 or 4 engines in front and a couple in the middle from the enormous coal fields of Wyoming, a thousand or more miles east to the main coal fired eastern sea board power stations.
And they run them every twenty minutes, all running one way with the fully loaded trains running east on the best grade lines and the returning empty trains using another line with steeper grades.

I know because those damn fully loaded coal trains ran down the corridor every twenty minutes of a motel that we stayed in alongside of the rail line in I think, South Dakota.
—————

Now SA’s whacko Wetherill and Konstantkickass are going to spend $500 million of SA’s and the rest of Australia’s hard earned on a gas fired generator and a bloody battery that cost a good slice of SA’s annual GDP and will “possibly” provide a couple of minutes of power to SA when the lights are about to go out when the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine and the Vics are staring at yet another utterly stupid politically created blackout disaster in the face themselves so they close down the interlinks to SA.[ and NSW ]

The South Australian Government has announced it will spend more than $500 million to build a new gas-fired power plant and Australia’s largest battery as it moves to secure the state’s energy supplies.
&
The government will build, own and operate a new $360 million, 250-megawatt gas-fired power plant.
Australia’s largest battery will be built before next summer, by the private sector, and be funded from a $150 million renewable technology fund.

SA’s energy minister will have the power to order a generator to be switched on if more supply is needed (a power held by the AEMO)

A doubling of an already announced scheme to incentivise new gas supply for local generation

Land owners to receive 10% of state royalties generated from gas wells on their properties

There’s a plan to supply “coal-rich” states with power generated in SA

So for the princely outlay of $500 million, half a billion dollars, the South Aussies get a 250 megawatts gas fired power generator that apparently is going to be able to supply a good deal of the rest of Australia just a soon as Wetherill decrees it will do so.
——————–

Now if Wetherill and dopey Dan had actually learnt to read at school instead of playing at politics they could have looked all of the following up themselves;

Shenhua Shenwan Energy Company’s Anqing Power Plant Phase II’s 2 × 1000-MW expansion project is a prominent example of HELE coal-fired power in China. In this project, Shenwan adopted a series of design innovations to optimize environmental performance based on the specific features of China’s coal-fired power sector as well as Shenhua Group’s development strategy to be a world-class supplier of clean energy.
Using the latest technological achievements, Shenwan constructed a high-capacity, efficient, and low-emissions coal-fired power plant, which is currently considered to be the state of the art in China. For example, the plant boasts the highest steam parameters in China (see Table 1), resulting in the efficient utilization of coal with extremely low emissions.
&
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The scope of the construction of the Anqing Phase II project included two identical ultra-supercritical coal-fired power units, including limestone-gypsum wet desulfurization (FGD) and selective catalytic reduction (SCR) denitrification facilities that were built simultaneously.

Construction commenced on 1 March 2013, and the two units were commissioned with the compulsory 168 hours of full-load testing on 31 May and 19 June 2015.

Together, this low-emissions technology chain drastically reduces emissions of PM, SO2, NOx, heavy metals, etc.
Not only are the emissions less than the national standards where the Anqing plant is sited,2 they are also lower than the emission limits for newly built coal-fired power units in the central regions.

[ This really caught my eye; A Ultra super Critical HELE very large scale coal fired generation plant that is cleaner than a gas fired open cycle and maybe even cleaner than a closed cycle gas powered generator ]

In addition, the new units at Anqing actually surpass the limits for gas-fired units as prescribed in the “Action Plan for Coal Energy Saving, Emission Reduction, Upgrading and Alteration (2014–2020)” from the National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Environmental Protection and National Energy Administration

Say it again! Sam!
.

SA; Aud $500 million for 250 megawatts of low emission gas fired generator and one battery that might work a bit but like the desalination plants are absolutely useless in reality and will take a couple of years to build if it doesn’t burn or blow up whilst they are still putting it together.

Built in just over 22 months and with emissions that are LOWER than any gas fired power generator of a similar output and no doubt quite a lot lower per Mw of output compared to SA’s proposed gas generator particularly if as seems likely, the SA gas powered generator is an open cycle generator to maximise a fast start up.

The emissions and efficiencies of open cycle gas generators which can be up and running in minutes is fairly pathetic.

Closed cycle gas generators can operate with efficiencies of over 55% by having boilers to extract the heat from the gas turbines hot exhaust gas and a steam turbine to extract the energy from the gas turbine heated boiler steam means that start up times for the closed cycle gas turbines is calculated in hours.

Consequently closed cycle gas turbines are used as base load generators where they can run under load at quite high efficiencies.

Wetherill seems to be saying that the proposed SA gas turbine generator will be a fast response system to cover for when his wind turbines cark it again for the day and will therefore be of an open cycle and a not very efficient user of gas for its power generation .

South Australian’s @360 million for 250 Mw’s of gas fired generation capacity will be paying Aud $1.44 million dollars per Mw of generator output.
.China with a Ultra Super critical HELE generator plant already operating, has paid Aud $632,000 per MW of output.

And with very much lower coal fueling costs compared to SA’s gas fired generators.
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Interesting technical details in the article as above for those interested.

——————–

I truly despair at the utter stupidity and the complete lack of any semblance of intellectual input into any long range planning amongst the political class.

They are all so deep into imposing and imposting political correctness on everybody down to the lowest individual and with Saving the Planet that they have completely forgotten the very basics of our civilisation must be maintained and upgraded on a very regular timetable.

In short the political class are so incompetent in a technical and organisational sense that they could not plan and run a free night in a house of ill fame even though a number of them no doubt are quite familiar with the operations of such an establishment.
.

The Americans railroads run mile to two mile long coal trains with 3 or 4 engines in front and a couple in the middle from the enormous coal fields of Wyoming, a thousand or more miles east to the main coal fired eastern sea board power stations.
And they run them every twenty minutes, all running one way with the fully loaded trains running east on the best grade lines and the returning empty trains using another line with steeper grades.

The same thing happens here where I live in Rockhampton.

Those huge units also run here as well. They take the coal from the Bowen Basin, mainly loading up at Blackwater, and then transport it to the Port of Gladstone.

They also have five huge locomotives, three at the front and two in the middle. They each haul 100 hoppers, each holding 100 Tonnes of coal, hence 10,000 Tonnes of coal. They are also around a kilometre to mile long. They do it at the rate of one an hour 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. I first noticed them when I was living at Blackwater for a year. (2004) They pass Rockhampton slightly to the South on their journey to Gladstone. One train down and one train back, every hour, so around a quarter of a million Tonnes of high grade black coal each and every day, so around 88 million Tonnes a year, all exported.

Likewise here in the Hunter Valley NSW except that I’ve only ever seen them use 3 locos on a 100 wagon train also of 10,000 tonnes capacity. I can tell you from personal experience that from a dead stop, a train like that takes well over 10 minutes to clear a level crossing as it tries to accelerate to cruising speed. They may be able to make do with 3 engines here due to a slight average downhill gradient from the upper Hunter coal fields to the port of Newcastle.

The main difference is that at their peak our trains run at 4 to 6 minute intervals, coal in one direction and empties in the other on separate lines.

If I recall rightly they have only stopped twice in the last 20 years other than for industrial or maintenance reasons ― once for the Pasha Bulka Storm flood in 2007 and once for the April Storm flood of 2015 when the massive flood gates across the lines at Maitland had to be shut and sand-bagged, in each case for about 3 or 4 days.

10,000 tonnes of coal every 6 minutes, all for export. On top of that the Hunter region produces the coal for Bayswater, Liddell, Eraring and Vales Point power stations to the tune of 9.2GW capacity ― and the greenies tell us coal is a dying industry.

Folk,
If you want to see the world’s best and biggest heavy rail haulage go to the Pilbara.
If you want to see the biggest and the best in heavy rail coal haulage go to Wyoming.
Good to see that Carmichael and Alpha are to opt for heavy gauge rail and not the smaller gauge which currently inhibits NSW and QLD coal haulage.

Thanks Graeme No3;
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I worked from memory so went a bit conservative with that 55% efficiency as it has been some months since I went internet fossicking on the subject of gas fired generators both closed cycle and open cycle so as to gain some insight on the differences and why and how.

The fuel burn efficiencies go even higher up to over 80% [ Finland I think ] if the exhaust gases which are still quite hot by the touchy feely standards are used to in a small district heating system where hot water or cooled boiler water which has been heated by the gas turbine and downstream steam turbine exhaust gases are used to heat homes and small industrial enterprises around the turbine’s installation location.

ROM:
One of the Danish coal fired plants claims 90-91% efficiency by using the ‘waste’ heat for household warmth, heating swimming pools and de-icing roads and sporting fields. Of absolutely no use in Australia – except Macquarrie Island.

Note that there is nothing ‘new’ about 62% overall thermal efficiency with large CCGT facilities.
There are at least two in Australia; Swanbank E at Ipswich and Tallawarra at Wollongong.
These are nominally designed KA26 power stations, originally designed by ABB but taken over by Alsthom. Over 400 MW on one machine.
The Taranaki Combined Cycle power station in Stratford new Zealand is an earlier version, with lower capacity but the same thermal efficiency.
A Siemens power station in Auckland New Zealand is of the same vintage, about twenty years old, and similar capacity and efficiency.
So far as I am aware, TCCP and Swanbank E are mothballed or rarely on line. I believe Tallawarra is still operational.
Difficult to push the envelope further, unless, as you point out, there is a need for low quality heat. In colder climates such as Scandicnavia this is sometimes the case.
I remember when I worked for GE there was a GE CCGT power station in North Carolina that boasted about 72% OATE because there was a market for the low quality heat heat. That was in 1970.

Irsching 4 & 5, both late model CCGT plants in Germany and extremely efficient, are in the process of being shutdown. Says something when state of the art, low emissions plants, cannot be operated profitably in the current environment. They will likely be replaced by new brown coal burning plants.

14 Mar: Guardian: Anna Fazackerley: British scientists face a ‘huge hit’ if the US cuts climate change research
Academics fear Donald Trump’s environmental policy may put an end to key data from US agencies
Prof Joanna Haigh, co-director of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, says: “Everything we do is international, and we particularly rely on American satellite data. Perhaps we could manage if other areas were cut – perhaps the Chinese or the Indians might even step in to fill the gaps – but we would definitely miss the satellite data from the US.”
Haigh uses satellite data to study how the sun influences the Earth’s climate. She is helping to disentangle the effect of natural fluctuations in solar energy from those of manmade greenhouse gases – and she is clear that global warming cannot be attributed to the sun or other natural processes…

She says cutting the NOAA’s budget would be a “huge hit” not only for science, but also for our understanding of the weather. “They are trying to get rid of everything that could be badged as climate change. But to understand the climate you need to measure the weather. You can’t separate the two. Whether you are on a climate change ‘bandwagon’ is irrelevant.”…
However, some climate scientists point out that with Brexit looming Britain may struggle to present itself as a place of calm and stability from which to escape Trump…https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/14/british-scientists-us-climate-change-research-trump

In Germany, the home of the ‘Energiewende’, translated as the “Transition to green energy” where Merkel and Co intended [ now past tense and becoming increasingly so ] to force Germany’s energy generation to be at least 50% from renewable sources, the major German fossil fueled generator owners and operators EON, Lost 12.4 Billion Euro’s last year. [ Aud $17.4 billion ] due to the way the German and most renewable energy subsidies work and due to the renewables having first call on supplying power.

In fact in a couple of German states, the State Legislatures rammed through laws requiring the fossil fueled generator owners to continue to run their generators even though they were copping huge financial losses to do so and were going to close the generators down because of the losses.

A very similar situation is being created in SA and maybe Victoria due to the same streak of utter insanity in our politicians as has occurred in the German politicians .

Plus the added drawback for Australia that our politicians in another fit of total political insanity seem to be utterly incapable of ever learning the simplest possible lessons from the bad experiences of other nations who have been down the renewable energy route for a couple of decades ahead of Australia.

Just a quick comment. I haven’t read all the above so apologies if this has already been said. Don’t forget that the so called renewable plant, wind turbines and batteries, will themselves need to removed and renewed. So the 60 to 90 billions on batteries will need to be repeated in only 10 to 15 years, if they last that long. And the billions on wind turbines to be repeated about 25 to 30 years, if they last that long.

Sustainable energy generation is not sustainable. Hazelwood is outputting more in its dying weeks than all the windtowers together but it is ‘old’ at 45-54 years and ‘dirty’ because it outputs essential CO2 just like all humans, plants, insects and the oceans.

We can rely on our genius politicians though to control our climate with their taxes, while shutting down the country. The problem with politicians is that they retire on fat pensions, having done immense damage. The very idea that South Australia controls their own climate is a climate scientology, not science at all. A fantasy like Di Natalie’s 4 day working week. Why work at all? The government will provide.

I wouldn’t worry about the needs to replace them in the years/decades ahead. The way things are going we might just be another province of China by then so we will have lots of new coal fired power plants built in no time.

Don’t forget that the so called renewable plant, wind turbines and batteries, will themselves need to removed and renewed ……. And the billions on wind turbines to be repeated about 25 to 30 years, if they last that long.

As a sidebar to the work I have been doing with Hazelwood, and comparing it to wind power, I have also been keeping an eye on one particular wind plant, the Challicum Hills wind plant, and only because it is one of the oldest large scale wind plants here in Australia, opened in 2003, so just more than 13 years old. It has 35 X 1.5MW turbines for a Nameplate of 52.5MW.

I have been watching this plant specifically to see just how many times the plant actually generates the full 52.5MW, wondering if ALL the turbines are still operational, and keeping an eye on this oldest of plants is indicative of all of those wind plants.

Admitted, it has only been for two weeks, but during those two weeks, there have been days when there has been good wind power generation, and you can usually tell when those good time periods are because the power generation spikes to maximum, so indicating that, because the plant is in a (relatively) confined space, then the wind is blowing constantly enough to have all the huge fans turning.

That has happened quite a few times across these last 14 days, spiking to maximum.

However, the maximum recorded power generation for those last 14 days has been 42MW a couple of times and in the high 30s a few more times, but at no time has it reached the full 52.5, leading me to believe that some of those units are in fact not working at all, and at 10MW (missing) that comes in at 6 or 7 of them not operational, and that’s 17% of the Plant’s maximum Nameplate, so, one in six of those turbines on poles is not working.

There were an awful lot of times when this whole plant was not generating anything at all, output zero, and that occurred on eleven of the fourteen days.

The best day for power delivery only averaged 22MW, (CF 42%) and the worst was 3MW (and that 3 MW was the maximum average power delivery per hour for the whole 24 hour period)

The average Capacity factor for the last 14 days has been 18%. The rest of Victoria is averaging 22% and across the whole of Australia, the average is 29%.

So, what this shows me is that wind plants despite the claims of 25 years of power delivery, fall off pretty dramatically after 10 to 15 years.

Compare that with 53 year old Hazelwood, which is still capable of delivering 86% of its original rated nameplate. Challicum Hills is down around 80% after only 13 years.

Germany’s roughly 155,000 On Shore turbines in 4351 wind farms average around an 18% capacity factor or less than a fifth of their actual claimed plated capacity.

And it is now showing so a bit of reading for Windmill Weatherill and Dopey Despot Dan of Victoria .

Throw in an equally incompetent technically ignorant in the extreme ,[ he was only another union headquarters th*g remember ] Shorten and maybe they will decipher between them what this means for the future of renewable energy everywhere as Trump and co get around to chopping up the great global warming / climate change scam.

Hilarious.
Being sceptical, I don’t put much store in your link – it looks just like a fake news site.
So I google – all I find is half a dozen fake news websites carrying this story.
And I tracked down the original article it is pretending to be based on.
Among other things, this is what it says:
“At the beginning of March, Minister Sigmar Gabriel presented a draft amendment to the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG). The paragraphs regulate the promotion of green electricity. The new provisions will be decided in the coming months.The paper stipulates, among other things, that the amount of electricity from renewable energies will be limited to 40 to 45 per cent of electricity consumption in 2025. At the end of last year, it was almost 33 percent.”

And the panicky nonsense about the death of the wind industry was fear-mongering by the Green lobby based on a model they devised.
Lol.
How gullible would you have to be to believe fake news.

There are over 500 local groups in Germany that have formed to fight further wind turbine installations in their areas.
In addition a section of the German green movement has now reversed its support of wind turbines and is now embarking on a program of limiting and stopping the building of more turbines and the possible dismantling of many current turbine installations because of the immense damage the unrestricted building of turbines has done to very large areas of germany’s treasured forests and heritage areas and the huge destrpoying of some of Europes most treasured and protected bird species.
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From Speigel online, one of Germany’s major left leaning publications;

The real fake news is the totally false and misleading lies and propaganda that is put out by the wind turbine and solar industry.
They ALWAYS without exception quote the plated capacity of the turbines and / or the solar cells as the apparent amount of energy that will be delivered .

They NEVER use the real and actual hard data of the energy they supposedly generate to inform the public and the politicals of their real and much smaller., less in Australia’s case than 30% of their plate output capacity [ and only 18% of plate capacity from Germany's onshore turbines], as the real amounts of energy they contribute to the grid.

It is a very well stablished fact is that as turbine penetration goes up, the Capacity Factor drops and drops by a lot as the few best sites for turbines are taken up, just as has happened in Germany and the UK.

Again in Germany and across western Europe there is massive corruption of the local councils by wind turbine industry brown paper bags to councillors and mayors along with lucrative share deals to the same so that the wind turbine promoters can install turbines in some of Germany’s and Europes most treasured wild life and forest areas .
And this as it has turned out is very much against the wishes of a fast increasing percentage of the German citizens particularly in rural and bregional areas that bear the full brunt of the deliberate depredations and destruction of the natural environment by the wind turbine industry.

But this energy transition has come at a high cost and created not only winners. The Energiewende has also destroyed the effort embedded in existing infrastructure and put an unprecedented strain on German society. The rapid shift to renewables—with their emphasis on lots of small-scale, decentralized power and heat production—has fundamentally altered the traditional way of doing business for the big utilities in Germany, causing a huge drop in market share and big losses in earnings. From their past position as the backbone of the German economy, the utilities now totter on the brink of dissolution; there has been a large sell-off of assets by the utilities as a result. (Among other things, they are now trying to reposition themselves as providers of Big Data, and intelligent technology.)

And despite what some op-ed writers may have said, this energy-turnaround is most assuredly not a “done deal,” technologically speaking. There are still many issues to be sorted out, especially in the area of what energy experts call the intermittency problem—the fact that wind and solar don’t generate electricity around the clock. Nor is there a guarantee that efforts so far will make Germany hit its decarbonization targets. In fact, it looks like the country will miss its goals for 2020 and 2050.
&
While trying to make the best of these successive waves of change and still remain up to date with the constantly changing regulatory framework, the players in the Energiewende arena also faced soaring energy costs, an increasing dependence on intermittent power sources, severe energy transmission and storage problems, forced electricity exports, and competitive disadvantages for domestic manufacturers. These situations sometimes led, in extreme cases, to bankruptcies, business closures, unemployment, the migration of businesses into countries with less strict regulations, the export of greenhouse gas emissions, and even to energy poverty. (In 2014, German electricity suppliers sent 6.3 million dunning letters for delayed payments, and disconnected 351,802 households from the electricity grid for not being able to pay their electricity bills, according to Germany’s Federal Net Agency.)

&
Moreover, given that biomass and hydro potentials are finite and almost completely in use already, Germany’s energy system is increasingly dependent on intermittent sources of power. Despite all efforts to convert excess electrical power to hydrogen, methane, heat, or other storable commodities, and despite all progress made in battery research, there still is no technology in place at this time that can economically store electricity at a large scale.

Given that Germany’s electricity grid did not collapse, one might declare the intermittency problem as solved. Unfortunately, this ignores two essential aspects of the Energiewende that explain how Germany solved the intermittency problem until now. First, the problem of generating electricity on cloudy and windless days could only be managed because utilities were obliged to cover these intermittencies by maintaining and running fossil power plants as backup source, in an uneconomic mode. Second, Germany’s electricity generation on windy and sunny days often exceeds by far the grid’s balancing abilities, forcing the power surplus into the adjacent grids of neighboring countries, and obliging other countries to compensate for German intermittencies. These solutions are neither sustainable nor possible in a carbon-free economy. Moreover, whether bold Energiewende-like concepts will be successful or not essentially depends on our ability to really solve the intermittency problem.

.
Our up and coming mini Germany is South Australia which ironically has a high percentage of German ethnicity amongst its population.
But then Germans were always somewhat obstinate and take a good whack from a two by four between the eyes to recognise that they have a problem which won’t go away and must be dealt with and soon.

But when they move they don’t do things by halves.

I should know being of german descent!

So if the Germans are now saying as did their finance minister the other day, that there will be no further expansion of wind turbines and solar systems in Germany, the writing is on the wall for much of Germany’s vaunted Energiewende, the transition to green renewable energy and its wind turbine and solar industry.

Once the wind and solar units run out to the end of their economic lives in about 20 years or lessof operation they will rarely if ever be repaced as the world will have moved on and the great renewable energy scam will be long recognised for what it was, the fastest way known of transferring money from the poor to the rich.

And a straw in the wind for the german wind industry;

Because German law requires renewable energy to be used first on the German grid, when Germany exports excess electricity to its European neighbors it primarily comes from coal plants. Last fall, the German subsidiary of the Swedish energy giant Vattenfall started up a 1,600-megwatt coal-fired plant that had been under construction for eight years, defying opposition from politicians, environmental organizations, and citizens who want to see coal plants eliminated.

.

You really should get out a bit and educate yourself just a little Craig Thomas before you begin to comment on things you clearly demonstrate by your ignorance you don’t have a bloody clue about.

The actual Real News article said:
“At the beginning of March, Minister Sigmar Gabriel presented a draft amendment to the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG). The paragraphs regulate the promotion of green electricity. The new provisions will be decided in the coming months.
The paper stipulates, among other things, that the amount of electricity from renewable energies will be limited to 40 to 45 per cent of electricity consumption in 2025. At the end of last year, it was almost 33 percent.”

So they are advocating a 36% increase in renewables over the next 8 years. NOTHING like the Fake News you failed to be sceptical about.

In BC coal trains that size carry coking coal through one of the world’s longest railway tunnels.
At the bottom of this URL you will find a link to the facts that it requires one hundred tonnes of coal to produce one useless windmill.
Thirty five years ago when the Bennett government fostered the mining of the coal at Tumbler Ridge, the opponents said “Japan gets the coal; BC gets the hole”.

Tony, Rob is talking about battery life. I reckon you or another expert could query the life expectancy of batteries as well. I would certainly doubt a 25 to 30 year life, as does Rob, and would go further to doubt his suggestion of 10 to 15 years. After all batteries are batteries, big or small.. My experience with rechargeable batteries — car batteries, tool batteries, phone batteries, radio batteries — is a pathetic 2 to 5 year life, and I’d take some convincing that industrial scale ones would be much better.

Anyone who has managed a large computer network understands the dilemma.
It takes endless updating of spreadsheets trying to figure out when it’s best/ time efficient/ resource efficient/ cost efficient/ disruption efficient to do an upgrade of even the SOE (standard operating environment).
Combine that with upgrading the hardware as well, and it becomes a near impossible task because the target is continually moving and the next generation is always promised to eliminate half the problems. Sure . .
I’ve never seen those promises come true to any significant extent probably because someone else always wants to introduce some other ‘improvement’ to the whole system in the mean time.
Ahhh . . let’s update that spreadsheet again.

Tony, I very much appreciate the work you put into explaining about power generation.

However, any reference to averages, peaks and totals with regard to wind or solar power are totally irrelevant. When I turn on an electrical appliance I need it to operate at its rated power for the length of time I need it to run and at the time I wish to run it.

I wish it were possible for all politicians and the green-obsessed to have their power supplied totally from wind/solar (and maybe soon, batteries). Maybe then they would understand about intermittency.

Why not get them to register as renewable energy users and when the grid runs out of renewable energy they have their power cut off. That surely is not hard to do. The power utilities know exactly what the make up of their power supplies are. They should put up or shut up.

A few GWh flywheels should do it.
I can’t be bothered doing the calcs but surely all it would take would be a few structures the size of the Sydney Harbour Bridge rotating at a few thousand RPM.
What could possibly go wrong?

14 Mar: AP: SETH BORENSTEIN: Weather Service decided last minute not to cut snow forecast
WASHINGTON (AP) — Before the first snow fell, U.S. meteorologists realized there was a good chance the late-winter storm wasn’t going to produce giant snow totals in big Northeast cities as predicted.
But they didn’t change their forecasts because they said they didn’t want to confuse the public…
National Weather Service meteorologists in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington held a conference call Monday afternoon about computer models that dramatically cut predicted snow amounts. They decided to keep the super snowy warnings.
“Out of extreme caution we decided to stick with higher amounts,” Greg Carbin, chief of forecast operations at the Weather Prediction Center in suburban Maryland, told The Associated Press…
Dramatically changing forecasts in what meteorologists call “the windshield wiper effect” only hurts the public, said Bob Henson, a meteorologist for the private Weather Underground.
Carbin stood by the decision.
“The nature of the beast is that there’s always uncertainty in every forecast and we have to get better at describing that,” Carbin said…
University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd, host of the television show “Weather Geeks,” said ***the public focused too much on worst-case scenarios…http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCI_WINTER_WEATHER_FORECAST?

u have to read this to NOT believe it – CAGW causes EVERYTHING according to CNN’s “experts”:

14 Mar: CNN: Depression, anxiety, PTSD: The mental impact of climate change
By Meera Senthilingam
In 1996, Heather Shepherd, now 50, and her family did just that. Moving away from the congestion and noise of their north London home, they migrated to a 17th-century farmhouse that they would renovate and make their sanctuary…
But two years later, not long after work was completed on their rural home, they got a sign of what it really meant to live in their new village: It was prone to flooding…
With floods — as well as storms, heat waves and droughts — expected to increase in frequency thanks to climate change, the impact such trauma may have on the minds of those affected is something doctors, policymakers and governments are considering when planning services to help populations at-risk…
Two years after that, in 2000, the real flood hit…
Even 17 years later, the memory brings tears. “You feel like a homeless person,” she said. “Your safe place has gone.”…http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/14/health/climate-change-mental-health-eprise/

VIDEO: 13 Mar: Breitbart: Al Gore: Every Night on the News We’re Seeing ‘A Nature Hike Through the Book of Revelation’
by Pam Key
Monday, on “PBS NewsHour,” while discussing President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt saying carbon dioxide is not a primary contributor to climate change, environmental activist former Vice President Al Gore said, “We’re seeing every night on the television news now a nature hike through the Book of Revelation.”

Gore said, “[T]hat’s a perfect example of a problem I’m describing in ‘The Assault on Reason.’ Again, at some point, a false belief collides with physical reality. We are seeing every night on the television news now a nature hike through the Book of Revelation. ***These climate-related extreme weather events have convinced the vast majority of people that the scientists have been right for a long time. We have to address this. But putting someone in the EPA who denies even the most basic scientific truth about this — you know, it’s the old cliches are, you can say the earth is flat, but doesn’t mean you’re going to fall off the edge.”http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/03/13/al-gore-every-night-on-the-news-were-seeing-a-nature-hike-through-the-book-of-revelation/

Waffen-SS Weatherthrill must continue down the nationalistic path by making SA truly sustainable. Nationalise the Port Pirie lead smelter and crank up pyrite production from the Brukunga (Nairne)sulphide deposit to make lead and sulphuric acid for the indeterminable numbers of required batteries. For good measure form a brigade of brown-shirts to cross the border and seize the lead mine at Broken Hill. Command economy nirvana. All the while, singing rounds of “We’re bound for (to) South Australia”. Heave Away, Haul Away. And rename Port Adelaide to Port Misery.

Some better news not widely reported is that the SA Labor Government failed to overturn the South Australian Electoral Commission change of electoral boundaries greatly reducing the electoral gerrymander that has kept Labor in power. Unless the vote well exceeded 50% against them.

The High Court rejected Labor’s appeal against the new boundaries a week ago.

This whole thing with South Australia should provide insight to anyone willing to try and find it.

South Australia, (and here the natural thinking is that this is a whole State) only consumes 6% of Australia’s total power consumption, the second lowest in Australia, only marginally higher than Tasmania’s 4.5%.

If they cannot make renewables work on such a tiny scale, what does that say for Victoria, Queensland and NSW, and Australia as a whole.

This whole problem has arisen only since they started ramping up wind power and closing down both ancient coal fired power plants, Playford and Northern, because before they closed them, South Australia hummed along nicely thank you very much.

Six Percent of total Australian consumption, and renewables cannot be made to supply even part of that.

This experiment has now been shown to be the abject failure it was always going to be, and what do they do. Why, they look for an answer in the other direction.

I hope everyone is watching what is happening here, because this is what happens when you do not replace ‘Like for Like’, reliable power for reliable power.

Even yesterday the Premier was still quoting Nameplate only when he said that South Australia had 1600MW of wind and 400MW of solar power.

That actually translates to 480MW of wind, and 70MW of Solar.

Playford B when it closed was 240MW and Northern was 520MW.

So, they replaced 760MW of firm reliable power (albeit from ancient power plants like Hazelwood) with just 550MW of intermittent unreliable power, good on some days, and poor on other days, and even though relatively close, just what do you do on those poor days when wind in South Australia may only supply 80MW or less.

SIX PERCENT of Australia’s power consumption for the whole State of South Australia.

Tony, let’s be generous. The capacity factor of Wind is about 20%. Thus Wind provided perhaps 100 mw of actual power. Solar, meh, who knows. Jobs, Businesses, etc operate upon reliable power, as you say. The quickest road to poverty is renewables. Those proposing renewables ought bind their inheritance to their claims. That should do it.

In 2013 in South Australia it was about 31%, average output from wind farms (data not available from all wind farms). From 22.8% at Lake Bonney 3 to 41.9% at Snowtown.
Taken from table on page 24 of Energy Generation Oct/Dec 2013 article ‘Do Wind Farms / Gas Turbines Save Carbon?’ here:http://www.powertrans.com.au/product/eg-issue-4-2013/

It’s very close to 40% in SA, Lance, due to the wide open spaces, low population and resulting lack of siting restrictions.

Wind power in South Australia barely averages 30% across a whole year, and each year that figure falls, and Craig, that’s from actual data, not some guess you mention, and it’s an easy enough thing to check.

Craig,
Do the turbines have 100% availability (or even better)?
We all know the ones operating have less than 40% utilisation.
Do you understand the difference between availability and utilisation?
Quick – off you go to Wikipedia.
It is about time you stopped dreaming.

” for 90% of the time, South Australian total wind
generation varied by no more than 21 MW (1.4% of registered capacity) across five-minute periods, and
by no more than 83 MW (5.6% of registered capacity) across 30-minute periods. “

13 Mar: BBC: Richard Gray: The biggest energy challenges facing humanity
Every day, our species chews its way through more than a million terajoules of energy. That’s roughly equivalent to what we would use if all 7.5 billion of us boiled 70 kettles of water an hour around the clock. Or 3,000 times the daily output of Palo Verde nuclear power station in Arizona – one of the world’s largest – running at full capacity…
But our gas guzzling over the past two centuries has taken a potentially devasting toll on the planet. Burning of coal, oil and gas has been inextricably linked to the rising levels of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere and is a leading contributor of climate change. The world’s scientists agree that we are on a path towards disaster that can only be stopped by weaning ourselves off our fossil fuel habit. But that leaves us with a problem. How do we ensure the lights stay on?…

“The energy industry is facing decades of transformation,” according to a recent report by the World Energy Council (LINK). Yet the implications of the changes underway go far deeper. There are political, economic and social issues at stake, but it may also require each of us to make some fundamental shifts in our behaviour too…
In truth, the picture may not be as bleak as it could be. Around a fifth of the world’s primary energy supply already comes from renewable sources such as wind, solar, hydro and geothermal. This sector is expected to continue growing by 2.6% each year until 2040…
But building new hydroelectric dams is controversial and extremely damaging to local habitats. It has left researchers searching for another solution.
***Some are looking at building banks of batteries to store this energy, but battery technology is not yet good enough to efficiently store large amounts of energy…http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170313-the-biggest-energy-challenges-facing-humanity

Tony seems to be under the impression that recent blackouts in SA had something to do with renewables.

As for the article above, the maths is simply astounding – why are you talking about “average deficit” over the period 17-24 Jan 2016, when there were times of surplus during that period! Hilarious.
As for the adding up deficits to get huge numbers in the GWh – this is ludicrous.
This is exactly why we have :
1/ cross-border trading – which is handicapped by selling our assets to the chinese and taking profits offshore instead of building the northern interconnect
2/ gas-fired power station – and it would do the job fine if its owners (probably more foreigners I guess) weren’t gaming the electricity price markets instead of just switching it on when demand goes up.

What an absolute pile of steaming excrement. During WW2, the japs frequently and enthusiastically got stuck into murdering civilians and unarmed prisoners. Why? Because we’re not all the same and you can’t trust your he vast majority of foreigners because they come from cultures where selfishness and lack of empathy are the norm.

Craig’s posts at 40.3.1. and 50.2.1 – Craig writes in absolute ignorance of the facts and in support of the advertising that wind has 40% – 45% CF.

The advertising blurb from wind operators says 30%, Aneroid shows 18% consistently and the wind turbine tech guy who lives next door says they have an 80/20 rule – for 80% of the time they produce 20%.

What the hell are you babbling about? Yes, the average Capacity Factor is 33% but what has that got to do with intermittency?
The output from wind farms fluctuates from 0 to, rarely, 100% of quoted capacity. That is what makes load following so difficult, and why Weatherdill wants to install batteries and diesel generators.

Yes Tony, it’s a concept called “load following” and it exactly how all grids work. You should read up on it.
Incidentally, I rang the Museum of Australia and they said they’d like to preserve a few of your ideas to add to their fossil collection.

“load following” is the intermediate power generation level between baseload generation and peaking load generation.

How exactly can wind and solar perform any “load following” during a cold still night, especially when the baseload generation is barely coping?

“load following” is not instant on!

It (“load following”) is a normal generation method, and it follows prediction statistics of anticipated load. These anticipated load statistics are accumulated for a locality based on historical data of variations over the day, weeks, months seasons, and attempt to account for changes in industry and population, changes in technology and many, many other things.
Usually “load following” generation is up and running often ready on grid ahead of the anticipated load increase (that is why the frequency is higher before load comes on) and remains available (but off grid) long after the load has decreased.
This “load following” is load change anticipating generation is in addition to the baseload generation.

So Craig if you think good “load following” is all that is required then you are advocating even more brownout/blackouts across not only in SA but the entire nation.

I forgot: The power station that didn’t turn on was Pelican Point 2 which had been mothballed because it had lost too much money the previous year due to undercutting by subsidised wind. It had no fuel available and would have taken 4-5 hours to get to full operation because it is a CCGT not an OCGT. I see you believe politician’s spin.

And speaking of OCGTs these won’t start up until the spot price gets around $300 per MWh, but they can’t be gaming the system, could they? as they are often owned by the wind farmers.

And a final comment Pelican Point No.1 was only running because of a not disclosed agreement (read subsidy) between the Company and the Treasurer (also Minister for Electricity) during the black start stoppage.

Investigations now show that there was a total sustained reduction of 445 MW of wind generation across nine wind farms, plus further transient reductions of 39 MW in each ride-through event. The transient reduction in output was spread across all wind farms online at the time, including those that did not suffer a sustained reduction in output. This information replaces the data (315 MW lost from six wind farms) in the Preliminary Report.

Information provided to AEMO indicates that damaged transmission lines were subjected to actual wind speeds that were much higher than forecast.

The sudden loss of 445 MW of generation increased flows on the Heywood Interconnector. The
Heywood Interconnector’s automatic protection mechanism operated and disconnected to avoid
damage to the interconnector and other transmission network infrastructure in both SA and Victoria.

Absolute BS Craig. You obviously didn’t have a good look at the event timing sequences. As JB said, the towers went down AFTER the wind turbines shut down and the interconnector disconnected due to overload. You just believe the rubbish put out by the SA govt trying to justify their stupid decisions and never looked closely at what really happened.

14 Mar: UK Times: Emily Gosden: SSE price rise adds to pressure for cap
SSE is to
its electricity prices by 14.9 per cent, adding £73 to an annual bill for 2.8 million households.
Britain’s second-biggest energy supplier blamed the rising costs of renewable energy subsidies and installing smart meters. The company said it would leave gas prices unchanged, resulting in an average increase to a dual fuel bill of 6.9 per cent.
SSE is the last of the “Big Six” suppliers to announce its pricing policy in recent months…
All have blamed government policies to some degree for their price rises…
SSE’s increase will increase political pressure to act on energy prices, days before parliament is due to debate the issue. Fifty MPs have backed a motion demanding “immediate action” to ease the burden on households…http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/sse-price-rise-adds-to-pressure-for-cap-s8jh7bsdk

13 Mar: NorthernTimesUK: Shock for far north householders as electricity tariffs soar
Households in the far north will be particularly hard hit by the rise in electricity prices announced by the major energy companies over the past week.
***For there is no access to mains gas (where increases are much smaller) and little alternative.
SSE were the latest to announce an increase in tariff today, going up by 14.9 per cent.
E.ON prices are increasing by an average of 13.8 per cent from 26 April; ScottishPower by 10.8 per cent; EDF by 8.4 per cent and npower by 15 per cent.
Meanwhile gas price increases are around the 4.5 per cent mark…

28 Feb: Adelaide Advertiser: Off-peak electricity pricing coming to South Australia
by Sheradyn Holderhead & Daniel Wills
Smart meters will also be introduced in SA from December which measure and record how much electricity a household or business uses at 30 minute intervals…
AER board member Jim Cox said the new tariffs, coupled with smart meters reforms, would allow energy retailers to develop more tailored offers for consumers…

3 Mar: Scotsman: William Loneskie: Smart meters anything but for everyone apart from the energy suppliers
EU directive 2009/72/EU includes a measure for “intelligent metering systems or smart grids.” To comply, the UK government has mandated utility companies to remove our reliable analogue electricity and gas meters and replace them with ones which will allow the Big Six to introduce variable charging regimes.
All homes and small businesses are supposed to have smart meters installed by 2020. These are indeed a smart move for the electricity and gas suppliers because they will give them savings of £8 billion…

Not so smart for the meter readers who will lose their jobs. Not so smart for the home owners who have to take days off work or waste hours waiting for the unnecessary installation of new meters, and who may have to repeat the process twice or even three times.
Not smart for the consumers who ultimately have to pay the £11bn cost through their bills. Not smart when changing suppliers because not all wi-fi meters will work with all energy providers. And not smart for the security of Britain’s energy supply.

Besides if Weatherill wants a gas fired plant and one ready tomorrow, just buy Pelican point from Engie. It could be fired up tomorrow and there isn’t any gas anyway and it is expensive and they will run at a huge loss, but that’s the public service for you and the infinite generosity and patience of the taxpayer. More like gullibility.

It is far easier to promise $500Million for a future plant than to fix the problem today with a working plant.
They could use the profits of the $30Bn submarines to pay for it and the $30Million diesel plant the Submarine corporation is buying just to keep going.

Now when is Bluescope closing Whyalla? When is Port Pirie closing? How much longer can Weatherill claim he is the innocent party?

I see the Greens Leader, Di Natalie, wants a 4 day working week. No doubt he should be happy when his State’s energy crashes, and, the “workers” in SA will be the first in the world to have a 7 day weekend.

Frankly I would vote for a ten second working day, once a week for green cult members with the proviso they go off and did something else other than mess up the country as well as everybody else’s day.

A leisure pusut for the greens on those 6 day, 23 hours 59 minutes, 50 seconds days off could be checking items like Galileo’s conclusions on gravity .

Small greens and large greens could step off a few cliffs together to see if there was difference in the rate of fall between two different weight bodies.
A number of such tests on a number of locations to eliminate any bias as to differences in green’s weights and their gravitational effects.

No doubt there are other similar leisure pursuits for the greens on their days off that could be suggested by other posters.

I’ll try to put my bias aside for a minute.
I’m trying to imagine a situation where an entrepreneur tweets a ’solution’ with a bold money back guarantee and it’s picked up by a State Premier, no less . . . and within a week is hammered into a far reaching new independent energy plan.
Am I wrong to wonder if it’s even possible to produce this plan in such a time frame and have considered the due diligence?
Is this a reflection of just how desperate Jay Weatherill is?

Industrial grid sized and grid compatible batteries would create a quite high level of “noise”. within the vicinity of the battery system

They need fans to keep their subsystems cool such as the voltage and current flow control systems .
There is a constant 50 cycle per second hum from the AC loops in the voltage transformers that reduce the AC 50 cycle AC Grid voltage to the DC battery voltage whatever that might be.

There is a loss of energy during this change from AC to battery DC that is seen as heat and noise emanating from the battery system.

Then when power is drawn from the battery and its DC voltage, that battery DC current has to be reconfigured back to 50 cycle AC current using solid state DC to AC converters. which require cooling in high current flow situations
The whole conversion of AC to battery DC and then back to AC leads to losses of at least 4% in the power availability.
And that loss has to covered by the consumer and / or taxpayer, the same individual as is usual with all the usual politically inspired FU’s.

Then with some battery types, a set of pumps is required to re-circulate the electrolyte as well
.
All of which add up to a substantial noise profile plus the subsystems introduce another reliability factor into the whole battery use equation.

Strangely Willard in all his promotion of batteries doesn’t seem to have at any stage pointed out some of these requirements such as the high voltage grid AC > low voltage battery DC > high voltage Grid AC with a very close tolerance required to match the grid cycle profile and all the losses and inefficiencies that entails in all those changes in voltages and current characteristics.

But maybe to give Willard some slack, he just is plain dumb ignorant about all those requirements for a potential grid sized battery system.

Instead of flip-flopping between uninformed bias and silly questions, why not have a look into which power-related SA government tenders have closed recently, who submitted responses, who didn’t, and perhaps consider the thousands of man-hours that would have gone into framing the requirement on the one hand, and putting together a proposal on the other.

We’ll wait and see, Willard.
Craig is going to supply something verifiable to support a couple of years of planning.
This is based on my guess of three “thousands of hours” and one person working a 35 hour week.
It may well be that Craig is talking about only two thousand hours because he used the word “thousands” but wasn’t specific. That’s OK and I don’t see the need to carry on much until he confirms.
But while you’re here, Willard, perhaps you could help Craig out and support this “thousands of hours” assertion.

Oh dear! I wonder if Craig is familiar with the Aneroid website? Just checked, and wind production is heading south, just in time for all the workers arriving home!
Good ol’ wind! There when you just need it! NOT!http://anero.id/energy/wind-energy

Whatever the costs this will be a truly Renewable Energy Project …. a Renewable Income for the manufacturers …

The batteries will need replacing and renewing every 10 – 15 years or less

The windmills will need replacing every 10 – 15 years or less

So by 7-8 years into the project the renewable aspect will begin to kick in with a programme to renew the batteries and the windmills … Now that is genuinely Renewable and providing a permanent captive income stream for the battery and windmill manufacturers..

The ‘Capital Costs’ will have to be recovered on an average ~10 year cycle – so around 15% (or more) of the Capital costs will have to be recovered Annually to pay for the ‘Renewable’ aspects. That is a very high Annual Overhead Cost compared to a plant lifetime of 40 years or more …..

Shame that the poor people paying for this will be in permanent energy poverty … but hey, what better way to destroy an economy.

Most of our political leaders are in the upper end of the literacy spectrum but one in particular is a the very low end of the numeracy spectrum. But he won’t be completely lonely, he’s got a mate in Melbourne.

15 Mar: Australian: Graham Lloyd: Battery storage may have its place but this isn’t it
South Australia’s emergency power plan proves that battery storage is a fringe response rather than a durable solution to the state’s electricity woes.
Silicon Valley billionaire Elon Musk has milked South Australia’s problems for plenty of publicity to coincide with the launch of his new Powerwall 2 battery in Australia.
But Musk’s money-back guarantee always was on meeting a 100-day installation deadline rather than actually fixing South Australia’s problems caused by its over-reliance on intermittent wind and solar.
To the dismay of armchair electrical engineers, Premier Jay Weatherill yesterday confirmed the solution to South Australia’s blackout problems would overwhelmingly be gas…

The thing with Supra -
Nationals,the cits get further
‘n further from the seat of power
whereby regulation-con-volutions
muddy the waters, and before
you know it, cits, you’re up
to yr necks in a slough of despond,
taxes on the very air you breath
and massive fines post hoc
for things yr never dreamed of,
Horatio…

One for Jo to get her teeth into a with the benefit of frightening the hell out of the wind farm promoters and those political pushers of renewable energy who might just get caught up in the next wave of voter and consumer backlash which could get very nasty if it is shown that a large number of rural folk have suffered severe health problems from turbine infrasound and strobing and the politicals and health authorities did absolutely nothing about it except ignore and denigrate those rural sufferers of the debilitating wind farm infrasound and strobing effects.

Something I have mentioned on more than one occasion here on Jo’s blog and was aware of this key Irish court case, the outcome, now known, which will have huge ramifications across all of the wind farm infested regions in all nations.

.
Coming to a wind farm near you perhaps not far ahead in time as perceptions and rural communities rebel against having the health destroying wind farm monstrosities inflicted on them by remote city centric green elites all in the name of the supposed “saving of the planet” whatever that is in its arrogant infantile stupidity.

Big investors in wind farms are risking their shirts by investing in wind farms in Ireland.
In a recent High Court case, Enercon Wind Farm Services Ireland Ltd., admitted liability for nuisance to seven families who left their homes due to excessive noise from wind turbines.
Damages and costs, expected to run into millions, will be decided in April.
Many more cases are likely to follow.

The Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment has known since 2015 that the minimum setback distance of a turbine from a house, required to protect human health from noise, is far greater than that currently recommended.

[ edit ; German acoustic engineers are now saying that this distance should be at least 5 kilometres from any habitation.
Dopey Despot Dan here in Vicistan has reduced the set back for turbines from the previous 3 kilometres to one kilometre and the hell with the health and well being of the rural folks who are forced to live in the vicinity of those wind monstrosities. ]

This information, which emerged from an Access to Environmental Information enquiry, was kept under departmental wraps and publication of updated planning guidelines promised by Minister Naughten within 6 months of this government’s formation have been repeatedly postponed.

This information is now in the public domain.
The State, by allowing continued development of wind farms, is risking costly legal actions against it.
In addition, local councils and individual wind farm companies will face similar cases.
Rural communities have had enough.

What is the source of power that charges the batteries? If all wind and solar is used immediately then there is nothing extra to store. If there is more than enough at all times from solar and wind, then there is no need for storage.

“But surely the citizens of a democracy have a right to know”. … (Sir H. Appleby) ‘Knowledge only means complicity in guilt; ignorance has a certain dignity.’
Therefore: Subjects have the right to remain ignorant!

At least it may be dawning on some people that wind power has serious problems that cannot be solved by building more windmills. It shows how bad it has got that it is actually quite a win for reality. Has someone, somewhere, actually explained the details to the politician in question, or did Elon Musk just phone him up with another ‘great idea’ to sell?

7.5 million tonnes of lead acid batteries (at at cost of 60 – 90 billion dollars):

How on earth can this be considered ‘green’ ???

1) Lead acid batteries have to be replaced regularly and also maintained. They contain container loads of ultimately liquid waste, which the greenies also rail against.

2) Lead is mined using gasoline in fossil fuel heavy mines which the greenies also rail against for reasons of emissions but also direct pollution such as tailings ponds etc…

So, in order not to admit that they are complete morons, people who can not be proactive, people who can not see the wood for the trees when it comes to necessities of civilization as simple as keeping the lights on, they are willing to bankrupt their own State and maybe neighboring states, but also to not even achieve a ‘green’ outcome; the medicine being many times worse than their own hysterical invented illness (CAGW, which doesn’t exist).

The Greens and Labor Party, in combination with an Academic and Media industry hijacked by left-wing ideologues, is a great example of why PURE DEMOCRACY (mob rule) is a great evil, and why the American Republican system at least has checks and balances that no other democractic nation seems to have. No wonder the American Founders wrote vociferously about the tyrannies of instituting a PURE DEMOCRACY as opposed to a democracy with checks and balances spread out over unitary entities (the 50 States), etc…

God help Australia, because the people won’t help, they’re making it worse, and we don’t even have a right wing truly conservative party anymore now that the $200 billion pseudo-royal turncoat ‘Goldman Sachs’ Turnbull has disenfranchised that vital right wing capitalist constituency that maintained the sanity of our civilization.

A 3 month historical period is used to arrive at required battery capacity.
However there is nothing to say that the wind might cease blowing for some long period. I doubt the weather is gaussian distributed, instead some distribution with much wider spread. There will be times when the batteries will run out, guaranteed. Not every 3 months, but at some point in a ten year period.

The global market for lead-acid batteries is about $24 billion so it shouldn’t be too hard to get the rest of the world to forego buying any lead-acid batteries for only three years so SA can do the right thing.